I'm not a Klingon ( )

pIqaD Font for Bing's Klingon Translator

Shawn Steele - MSFT — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:10:08 GMT

People have asked me where to get a pIqaD font to use with Bing's Klingon Translator http://www.bing.com/translator/?from=en&to=tlh-qon&text=Hello%20Earth,%20I%20made%20the%20font

That's actually a font I made. (I'm not a font designer, so it has some rough spots, but it seems to work for most purposes).

The pIqaD font is licensed under the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL).

I've attached a zip with an updated version of the font. Both a ttf font to install locally, and a woff file if you want to embed it in a web site. It's called "pIqaD", so you'll have to pick that to use it in Word or whatever.

Bing Translator, Klingon High Council, and Klingon Language Institute announce support for Klingon as a Bing Translator Option!

Shawn Steele - MSFT — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:00:00 GMT

The Bing Translator folks have announced support for Klingon as a translator option. This was also proclaimed by the Klingon High Council.

I've blogged about making a Windows Klingon Custom Locale and Klingon font fallback for the Windows 8 lock screen, and now you can translate all those Klingon web pages too!

You'll never guess who gave them the font ;-)

-Shawn

Windows 8 Media Center and my Clock

Shawn Steele - MSFT — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:54:00 GMT

Something strange happened on my Windows 8 Media Center computer. I didn’t really realize it because the computer’s clock is “always right”, right? But I slowly started missing more and more of the beginning of my recorded TV shows. Then, after several months, I realized that the clock on my computer was drifting.

That seemed weird. After all, it’s supposed to synchronize itself to the Internet Time service, but for some reason that wasn’t happening. After poking around a bit, I discovered that, in Scheduled Tasks (Search for Schedule Tasks in settings, or Windows + R, and type “mmc.exe taskschd.msc”), the time synchronization task was running in the wrong user account.

To fix it, I changed the tasks in Microsoft->Windows->Time Synchronization to use the LOCAL SERVICE account. (Right click the task and pick properties). No guarantees, and I’m not responsible if you break anything, but if your Media Center computer doesn’t seem to be able to keep accurate time, you might want to check and see. As I mentioned before, I'm not in the Media Center team, and I'm not quite sure why it's configured this way.

-Shawn

Slowing down searchfilterhost.exe on my Media Center box when Xbox 360 Extender is attached

Shawn Steele - MSFT — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 01:42:15 GMT

I noticed an oddity with Media Center Extenders that didn’t work very well with my system, and was causing my computer’s SearchFilterHost.exe to unnecessarily re-index a bunch of stuff in my media libraries.

I’m not on the Media Center team, but I poked around and found out some stuff.

Whenever you connect an extender, there’s a scheduled task (mcxtask.exe) that fires and makes sure that all of the Media Center libraries have access permissions for that extender. That’s important if your libraries change, but for me it’s not that important, all of my libraries inherit their permissions and I don’t change the root folders that much.

The Windows Search Indexer notices when someone’s changed the permission for a file, so that it can be accurately indexed. So when the XBox 360 Media Center Extender connects, it “fixes” all of my permissions, to the same thing they already are, and then the Indexer re-indexes all of that stuff. With 100,000 photos, that can take a while and unnecessarily bogs down my machine.

So I looked in scheduled tasks (Search for Schedule Tasks in settings, or Windows + R, and type “mmc.exe taskschd.msc”), and found some entries under Microsoft->Windows->Media Center->Extender, one for each extender. And then I disabled those tasks (right click -> disable). Don’t do this if you aren’t comfortable with what might happen, no guarantees that it’ll work for you!

Now when I log on an extender, the task won’t run. The disadvantage is that if move my media libraries around, I might have to turn the task back on long enough to run once, or add permissions manually for the new folder, but it saves my machine a lot of unnecessary work. My symptoms were the SearchFilterHost.exe process reading all of my photos, music and videos libraries every time I connected an xbox 360 extender.

If I add a new extender, Media Center will create a new task, so, after it finishes running once, I’ll have to go back to scheduled tasks and disable it.

If you’re curious about the permissions themselves, you can look at the security tab for a folder’s properties. The Media Center Extenders are account names with a long number and then something like (MachineName\Mcx1-MachineName). Again, no guarantees if you muck with the permissions and break something!

Anyway, hope this helps other people if you’re having trouble with your Media Center computer over-indexing your media files.

-Shawn

Converting text file code pages

Shawn Steele - MSFT — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:49:00 GMT

I've said "use Unicode" a lot, but sometimes there are programs that aren't doing what you'd expect, and outputting stuff in a different code page. Additionally, you might sometimes encounter a text file that was created using the system code page of a different machine. (Like if someone emailed me a txt file from a Russian computer, I wouldn't necessarily be able to make sense of it at first).

So, if you happen to have a text file in one encoding that you need to be able to read, you can write a little program to convert it. Or, if you find this blog post, you could even copy my little program to do that:

using System; using System.IO; using System.Text; class Convert { static void Main(string[] args) { if (args.Length != 3) { Console.WriteLine("Usage: convert.exe infile.txt outfile.txt incodepage"); Console.WriteLine(" eg: convert data.1252.txt data.utf8.txt 1252"); Console.WriteLine(" or: convert data.1252.txt data.utf8.txt windows-1252"); Console.WriteLine(" (output is always UTF-8)"); return; } int codepage = 0; Encoding enc; if (int.TryParse(args[2], out codepage)) { enc = Encoding.GetEncoding(codepage); } else { enc = Encoding.GetEncoding(args[2]); } StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(args[0], enc); StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(args[1], false, Encoding.UTF8); String str; while ((str = reader.ReadLine()) != null) { writer.WriteLine(str); } writer.Close(); reader.Close(); } }I've stuck the source and a compiled version in a convert.zip

Language packs and Windows RT (like microsoft surface or another Windows RT device) upgrades.

Shawn Steele - MSFT — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 16:07:38 GMT

My first blog post from a surface!

Apparently on Windows RT itʻs possible for Windows Update to check for language packs and office updates (which come through windows update on Windows RT machines) to get out of sync. So if you have a German or Russian or French or Spanish or other language Windows UI set through the Language Profile and yet your office is stuck or switched to English, you might have slipped through the cracks.

Iʻm told the machine will check when idle for a bit after the next reboot, but the catch with that is that Windows likes to go to connected standby so that it can keep doing things like mail reminders and stuff, and so normally it rarely reboots.

Fortunately the fix should be pretty easy: reboot and then wait a couple hours.

In general, to make sure Windows is running in your language, make sure youʻve set your language profile correctly. Open the lanugage profile by swiping from the right to get charms, picking the settings charm, picking pc settings, and then selecting language preferences from the general section. Add your language to the list if it isnʻt already there, and then move it up & down the list to the right place (like top for your preferred language).

For windows with a language pack, itʻll say "windows display language: available" (or installed) next to that language. Select options to install the language.

Even if we donʻt provide a language pack, itʻs a good idea to put your preferred language at the top of the list, because then applications that might know your language may be able to provide you the appropriate language resources within that application. For example, a Hawaiian speaker may choose Hawaiian as their first language and English as their second language. Windows (and Office) would use English for the user interface, but Hawaiian could be available in some applications. The language profile is powerful, letting you express many language preferences. The most common languages are in the dialog, but others can be found in the add search box, by name or ISO code.

Colorizing a Modern Win8 JavaScript AppBar and AppBarCommands

Shawn Steele - MSFT — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 06:01:00 GMT

[Fixed a couple links, sorry about that]

Lots of people are happy with the default styles of the WinJS.UI.AppBar and WinJS.UI.AppBarCommands, but what if you want to "colorize" them yourself? In a previous post I talked about using sprites for your AppBarCommands, but that is a bit heavy if you already have an icon you need, and doesn't quite cover colorizing any appbarcommand label.

So I made a little project that doesn't really do much. It just has a JavaScript AppBar and some CSS to colorize the AppBar and the commands. I included normal, selected and disabled states. Additionally there's a "normal" button for comparison.

I'm using two basic colors:

rgb(0, 0, 64) provides a dark blue color for the appbar, and
rgb(255, 204, 204) provides a light pink contrast color for the commands.

From those we derive 2 more colors for the hover states:

rgba(255, 205, 205, .13), mostly transparent for rest state when hovered, and
rgba(255, 205, 205, .87), partially transparent for selected state hover, which is
rgb(222, 178, 186), when rgba(255, 205, 205, .87) is applied on an rgb(0, 0, 65) appbar

Additionally, we need one more color for the disabled state to dim the command:

rgba(255, 205, 205, .4), fairly transparent for disabled, which is like
rgb(102, 82, 120) when applied to an rgb(0, 0, 64) appbar

Additionally, the appbar commands have lots of interesting states with hover, pressed states, etc. The comments in the CSS file are intended to help people understand the different pseudo selectors and classes that we use. They could be used for other things than just colorizing, either other effects for the various states or whatever your app needs.

HTML Sample AppBar

The default.html file declares the appbar and the appbarcommands. There's also a tiny bit of JS to make the appbar show when the app starts.

The interesting part of the HTML is the "extraClass" property, which will tag each of our commands with a "colorbutton" class.

The only other file I changed from the project template is the default.css file. This CSS does several things for us:

Makes the appbar blue
Makes the commands pink
Optionally makes selected toggles pink
Optionally makes disabled commands pink

Including disabled selected toggles if necessary

Optionally colors the AppBarCommand separator

Making the AppBar Blue

I probably should've added a "blue-appbar" class or something, but I just changed all appbar styles:

.win-appbar { background-color: rgb(0, 0, 64); }

That certainly makes the appbar blue, and if your appbar is "dark" in a ui-dark.css app, or "light" in a ui-light.css app, you might be satisfied with this result. However the icons on the appbar are really supposed match the appbar background color when the button is pressed or a toggle is selected. I cover the coloring of the commands or toggles in the various sections further on, but in case that's all you want, here it is. (If you color the commands as well, you'll see this block later; only add it once to your project).

When pressed the "disc" part of the button matches the pink ring color and needs a darker icon that matches the appbar. Mouse/touch and keyboard have different active pseudo-selectors:

button.colorbutton:hover:active win-commandimage, button.colorbutton:-ms-keyboard-active .win-commandimage { color: rgb(0, 0, 64); }

Similarly, when a toggle is selected, it also needs a darker icon to show up on the light pink disc:

button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true] .win-commandimage,button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:active .win-commandimage, button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:hover .win-commandimage { color: rgb(0, 0, 64); }

Coloring the Commands Pink

Both because I wanted to contrast the "normal" color command on the blue appbar with our custom pink colors, and because your app may have different modes, I tagged our commands with "colorbutton" in their "extraClass" property. That turns into a CSS class we can use to easily attach to our buttons, such as when declaring the default "pink" color for the command, which shows up in the label and icon. The source has more detailed comments:

.colorbutton, .colorbutton .win-commandimage, button.colorbutton:hover:active, button.colorbutton:-ms-keyboard-active, button.colorbutton:active { color: rgb(255, 204, 204); }

In addition, the command's "ring" needs to be pink with a transparent "disc":

.colorbutton .win-commandring, .colorbutton:active .win-commandring { background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(255, 204, 204); }

That covers the basic color of the appbar command, but there are some other colors needed when pressed. When pressed, not only is the ring pink, but the disc needs to be pink as well, and with a pink disc, we'll need to darken the icon image to the appbar color or the pink icon will be invisible on the pink disc:

button.colorbutton:hover:active .win-commandring, button.colorbutton:-ms-keyboard-active .win-commandring { background-color: rgb(255, 204, 204); border-color: rgb(255, 204, 204); } button.colorbutton:hover:active .win-commandimage, button.colorbutton:-ms-keyboard-active .win-commandimage { color: rgb(0, 0, 64); }

A tiny bit more detail; for mouse hover we want a slight tint in the disc, keeping the pink ring. The tint we use for the normal appbar is 13% of the foreground color:

button.colorbutton:hover .win-commandring { background-color: rgba(255, 204, 204, .13); border-color: rgb(255, 204, 204); }

For keyboard users we can keep the default focus rectangle, or we can provide our own color. Note that appbar uses a "win-hidefocus" class to hide the keyboard focus rectangle when the button wasn't focused by keyboard. If we override the focus rectangle for our colorbutton class, then that'll be more specific than the default CSS, and we'll need to make sure to provide the more-specific win-hidefocus selector as well. We'll make the keyboard focus rectangle the same light pink color here:

button.colorbutton:focus { border-color: rgb(255, 204, 204); } button.colorbutton.win-hidefocus:focus { border-color: transparent; }

That's it! If you don't need toggle buttons, needing to specify the selected state, or disabled buttons, then you're done and good to go!

Colorizing Toggle Commands

Selected toggle icons basically flip-flop from the normal rest and pressed states, so the disc will be filled in at rest, and empty when pressed. Labels are unchanged, but the disc change means that the image icon needs to be flipped as well:

Pink disc:

button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true] .win-commandring, button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:active .win-commandring { background-color: rgb(255, 204, 204); border-color: rgb(255, 204, 204); }

And a dark icon (appbar blue colored) to go on that disc:

button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true] .win-commandimage, button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:active .win-commandimage, button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:hover .win-commandimage { color: rgb(0, 0, 64); }

Hovering will need a little hint. We use 87% alpha, but we have to be careful because the border ring will draw on top of the disc, so we'll see it twice. I took a screenshot of the disc, then used mspaint's color picker to find the resulting color. If we use the rgba alpha for both, then the ring will have slightly more color than it's supposed to:

button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:hover .win-commandring { background-color: rgba(255, 204, 204, 0.87); border-color: rgb(222, 178, 186); }

Lastly, when pressed, a selected toggle command will look like a normal rest command. So we need to apply the ring and image colors again for the mouse/touch pressed and keyboard pressed states. Mouse/touch use :hover:active, and keyboard uses :-ms-keyboard-active:

button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:hover:active .win-commandring, button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:-ms-keyboard-active .win-commandring { background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(255, 204, 204); } button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:hover:active .win-commandimage, button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:-ms-keyboard-active .win-commandimage { color: rgb(255, 204, 204); }

That's it for toggles, unless you want to disable them, then read on...

Disabled Commands

The design guildlines suggest that HideCommands, etc be used to hide commands that aren't currently available, however that's not always possible. If you need to disable a colored command, you'll need to update the disabled styles as well.

When a command is disabled, we use a "grayed out" effect for it's rest state. Unselected toggles also use this. Note that our "gray" value is typically 40% of the full pink value. We don't have to worry about hover or pressed since it's disabled, but we do need to make sure that "active" buttons stay looking disabled:

button.colorbutton:disabled .win-label, button.colorbutton:disabled:active .win-label,button.colorbutton:disabled .win-commandimage, button.colorbutton:disabled:active .win-commandimage { color: rgba(255, 204, 204, 0.4); } button.colorbutton:disabled .win-commandring, button.colorbutton:disabled:active .win-commandring { background-color: transparent; border-color: rgba(255, 204, 204, 0.4); }

And that's it for disabled commands, unless you have toggles as well:

Disabled Toggles

In addition to the above disabled command CSS for the toggle's rest state, if you have disabled toggles you'll need CSS for the disabled selected state as well. Again, disabled pink is 40% of our normal pink state, though we are explicit about the color for our ring so that when it's applied on top of the 40% disc it doesn't appear too intense. Also, since the disk is pink we need to make sure that the icon image stays the appbar color, dark blue in our case. Again I used a screenshot and mspaint's color picker to figure out what 40% pink on a blue appbar was:

button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:disabled .win-commandring, button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:disabled:active .win-commandring { background-color: rgba(255, 204, 204, 0.4); border-color: rgb(102, 82, 120); } button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:disabled .win-commandimage, button.colorbutton[aria-checked=true]:disabled:active .win-commandimage { color: rgb(0, 0, 65); }

And that's it for disabled toggles! That's most of everything, unless you have a separator in your appbar.

Separators

Separators aren't very common in appbars, but if you do colorize your appbar and/or appbar commands, you might want to colorize your separator as well. The normal separator is a "48% white" color, so I used 48% pink...

hr.colorbutton.win-command {
background-color: rgba(255, 204, 204, 0.48);
}

That's It!

That's it for the CSS needed to colorize the AppBar &/or AppBarCommands with colors specific to your app's needs.

The link to my example project is here. The default.css file has more detailed comments about the various states:
http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-45-15/3113.CustomAppBarColor.zip

You might also be interested in the sprite example for more involved appbar icon image customization:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnste/archive/2012/06/16/custom-appbar-sprite-icons-for-your-windows-8-metro-style-html-app.aspx

Klingon Win8 Lock Screen: Might Sell Qurgh on Win8 After All :)

Shawn Steele - MSFT — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 02:21:00 GMT

A while ago I blogged about Klingon in pIqaD in a Custom Locale - that worked OK in Vista & Win7 using Uniscribe font fallback, but Win8 uses DWrite in a lot of places, and DWrite really would prefer EUDC (End User Defined Character) fallback. So my pIqaD didnʻt work so hot on Win8 :( Fortunately I found a reg key to fix that :) (This is abusing some of the OS behavior, which was designed for Chinese and Japanese, not Klingon).

EUDC characters are intended for use in primarily the CJK region, where you may need to use the "End user defined character" section of a code page (yes, code pages are evil, use Unicode). The EUDC sections are mapped to the Unicode PUA (Private Use Area), which is where Klingon lives since itʻs not in Unicode. Conscript gave some "consistent" (its not really a standard) places to put things like Klingon so I use those.

Anyway, normally the "code page" corresponding to the system code page of interest is used to look up extended mappings in the EUDC key. Typically thatʻs something like "932", but it works for 1252 as well. (If youʻre using another code page, update the example appropriately. So, we add a key telling Windows that for ʻend userʻ characters when the systemʻs running 1252, look in this font, eg:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\EUDC\1252]
"SystemDefaultEUDCFont"="pIqaD.ttf"

Not terribly difficult. Log off/on to the user and voila, we have Klingon fallback. Qurgh is gonna love this: I even make a pIqaD user account, and with the fallback I see it on the Start Screen:

Thatʻs wonderful, the lock screen also uses our user locale information (set Klingon pIqaD from my Vista custom locale), but the systemʻs actually doing the work. I copied the key "everywhere" just to make sure:

[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-20\EUDC\1252]
"SystemDefaultEUDCFont"="pIqaD.ttf"

[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-19\EUDC\1252]
"SystemDefaultEUDCFont"="pIqaD.ttf"

[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18\EUDC\1252]
"SystemDefaultEUDCFont"="pIqaD.ttf"

Donʻt forget default, new users are going to want pIqaD, Iʻm sure of it :)

[HKEY_USERS\.Default\EUDC\1252]
"SystemDefaultEUDCFont"="pIqaD.ttf"

And with that change, our custom locale provides Klingon on the lock screen too!

(Iʻm not sure where the wallpaper came from, if it was you, thanks).

Qurgh and I differ a bit on our approach to Klingon long date formats, but I like all that pIqaD.

Of course it isnʻt complete without the logon screen: (It was great of the theme guys to give us wonderful colors perfect for Klingons)

And wait, thereʻs more. Other users (because of .default if you got there first) can see that thereʻre Klingons sharing the machine:

And of course the Uniscribe stuff from my Vista post still works in other places. This box has a Klingon admin:

Of course, Iʻm just taking advantage of stuff that was intended for other purposes. More often EUDC is used for CJK character that represent names and other words not encoded in Unicode. So a company could use this technique to make sure that important words were usable internally. A family with unique names could make a font though and do this for their names.

Also, my Vista custom locale is a bit old, but I wanted tell Qurgh how to set up the EUDC stuff for his custom Klingon locales. I need to update my own older pIqaD custom locale package and keyboards, but thatʻll take a while..

(PS: I forgot to mention that EUDC fallback also respects the locales digit substitutions, so youʻll get Klingon numbers in various places. Uniscribe only does digit substitution for the number ranges it knows about (eg: those in Unicode, not the PUA), so those apps wonʻt see numbers in pIqaD).

Email Address Internationalization, aka: using UTF-8 in email, RFCs are published

Shawn Steele - MSFT — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 18:03:00 GMT

I helped write an RFC (http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6532.txt) :) (Well, I've had input before, but this is the first time as an author).

The core Email Address Internationalization RFCs, which allow UTF-8 in email addresses and use UTF-8 in SMTP by default, were published back in February. I sort of just realized I hadn't blogged about it, so I thought I'd mention it now :)

The list of EAI RFCs can be seen on the EAI working group page at https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/eai/

There's a Lego Cruise Ship in Building 85

Shawn Steele - MSFT — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 19:19:00 GMT

This has nothing to do with work (well, OK, I used Windows 8 for some photos, planning, desktop publishing, printing and scanning, so I tested some of those scenarios, but other than that...)

[The Lego Wonder is currently (2012) in Building 85. She'll be at ECCC Emerald City Comicon this weekend March 1, 2013.]

The Lego Wonder

Recently, I built a model of the Disney Wonder, in Lego. (I'm known for building Lego things, like Dropping the Space Needle), and I've gotten a lot of questions, so here goes:

The Lego Wonder is as accurate as I could make it, which took about 4500 pieces. The stats: it's about 4 feet / 1.2 meters long. It took about 6 days (Lara says 60 hours) to build, as we were interrupted by shows on the ship, ports of call, etc. As there are few Lego stores in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, we spent a couple weeks planning before the trip.

It Just Happened One Day

I blame it all on my wife, Lara. We were planning on a cruise (one guess which ship), and she pointed out that on long cruises they sometimes have boat building contests. She also mentioned that the judges might like their own ship, and, besides, it's a pretty ship.

With that conversation in mind, our Lego store had a sale a few weeks before the cruise, and so I grabbed some bulk bricks. Of course I got home tried to do some research, and discovered that all my guesses were all wrong. (I usually underestimate how many pieces I'll need for these things). Also, in the store there were 1x3 yellow bricks that I thought might work for life boats. I also guessed that 16 studs wide would be about wide enough for the detail, and figured it'd be maybe 2 or 3 feet long. Once I got the dimensions of the real ship I found how long and skinny these things are. My width, and the structure of the balconies also sort of forced the scale. If I wanted it 16 studs wide it was going to have to be 150 or so studs long....

My 3-stud lifeboats weren't going to fit at that scale. But the store didn't have any bricks the right color, so I was going to have to order bricks, with only a couple of weeks before we left on the cruise. I browsed through parts lists and came up with a few different ideas, but I wouldn't really know until I had the bricks in hand to play with, so I ordered parts for different ways of building it. Enough for 10 lifeboats on each side. I tried a few things at home, but crossed my fingers that the parts would work when they came. That went for several other pieces as well. The stacks for example, I only had a vague idea about, and so I tried to find a few different options that might work.

My biggest problem is that I remembered the hull being blue, but that didn't work in the rough mockup of part of the hull. I went back to the store and got black, which worked a lot better (the hull looks black in a lot of photos of the real ship), but I still wanted better. Unfortunately the right color was very rare and difficult to find. I managed to order some at the last minute, but it didn't seem like it would arrive in time. I gathered some black just in case. On the last day before we left I checked the mailbox, not really expecting anything. There were some letters, so the mail had come, but no bricks :( Not terribly surprised that they hadn't come, I walked up to the door, and there was a small package. The missing bricks had arrived!

There's a Lego Cruise Ship in Building 85 (page 1)

>> Like, What Do You Mean There Aren't Any Instructions (page 2)

>> Building the Lego Wonder (page 3)

>> Land Ho! (page 4)

>> All Done with the Lego Wonder (page 5)